The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-05-02

miss, III the tl'unK OF &he young man, IN bne
steamboat cabin, on the table of the hotel
reception-room. You see n light in your
child's room late at night. You suddenly
go in and say: What are you doingN Il
am reading "What are you reading"
"A book You look at the book; it is a bad
book. "Where did you get it9n 81 bor-
rowed it." Alas, there are always those
abroad who would like to loan
your son or daughter a bad book
Everywhere, everywhere an unclean
literature. charge upon it the destruction
of ten thousand immortal souls, and
| bid you this morning wake up
to the magnitude of the theme.
shall take all the worlds litara-
.ture-good novels and bad, travels true and
false, histories faithful and incorrect, legends
beautiful and monsTous, all tracts, all
chronicles, all epilogues, all family, city,
State and national libraries--and pile them
up in a pyramid of literature, and then
shall bring to bear upon it some grand,
glorious, infallible, 'unmistakable Christian
principles. God help ME to speak with
reference to my last account, and God help
you TO listen.
charge you, In the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pictures
of human life Life is neither tragedy
nor farce. Men are not all either knayes
or heroes. Women are neither angels nor
lures Anu yeti you uepeHueu upon
much of the literature of the day, you
would get the idea that life, instead of be
ing something earnest, something practical,
is tltful and fantastic and extravagant
thing. How poorly prepared are that young
man and woman for the duties
of to-day who spent last night
wading through brilliant passages descrip-
tive of magnificent knavery and wicked
ness! The man will be looking ell day long
fN, thNN 1,vA
in the factory, in the counting room, and he
will not find her, and he will be dissatisfied.
A man who gives himself up to the indis-
criminate reading Of novels will be nerve
less, insane, and a nuisance. He will be fit
neither for the store, nor the shop, nor the
field. A woman who gives herself up to
the indiscriminate reading of novels viii be
untitled for the duties Of wife, mother, sis
ter, daughter There she is, hair dishevelled,
coumtenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands
trembling, bursting into tears at midnight
over the fate of some unfortunate lover; in
the daytime, when she ought TO be busy star
ing by the half hour at nothing; biting her
finger nails into the quick. The carpet, that
was plain before will be palmer after hav-
ing wandered through romance all night
long in tesselated halls of castles. And
your industrious companion will be more
unattractive than ever, now that you have
phumed princesses, or lounged in the arbor
with the polished desperate. O, these con
firmed novel-readers! They are untitled for
this life, which is tremendous discipline.
They know not how to go through the fur
naces of trial through which they must
pass, and they are untitled for a world
where everything we gain we achieve by
hard, long continuing and exhaustive work
Again: Abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture of evf
You have read books that had two elements
in tbem-the good and the bad. Which
stuck III yous The bad The heart of most
people Is like a sieve, which lets the small
PARTICLES OF gold fall through, but keeps the
great cindeTs Once in a while there is
mind hike loadstone, which, plunged amid
steel and brass filings, gathers up the steel
and repels the brass But it is generally
just the opposite. If you attempt to plunge
through hedge of burrs to get one black
berry you will get more burrs than black
berries. You cannot afford to read a bad
book, however good you are. You say:
"The influence is Insignificant" | tell you
that the scratch of pin has sometimes pro
duced the loclSjaw. Alas, if through curl
osity, as many do, you pry into an evil book,
your curiosity is as dangerous as that
of the man who would take a torch into
gunpowder mill merely to see whether it
would really blow up or not. In menag-
erie in New York, man put his arm
through the bars of black leopards cage.
The animals hide looked so sleek, and
bright, and beautiful. He just stroked it
once. The monster seized him, and he drew
forth hand torn, and mangled, and bleed
ing. O, touch not evil, even with the faint
est stroke Though it may be glossy and
beautiful, touch it not, lest you pull forth
your soul torn and bleeding under the
clutch of the black leopard. "But," you
say chow can / find out whether book is
good or bad without reading it!" There is
ALWAYS something suspicious about a, bad
book. never knew an exception-some-
thing suspicious in the index or style of pic
lures. This venomous reptile almost always
carries warning rattle.
Again: / charge you to stand off from all
those books which corrupt the imagination
and inhame the passions. / do not refer
now to that kind of a book which the villain
has under his coat waiting for the school to
get out and then looking both ways to see
that there is no policeman around the block,
offers the book to your son on his way home
do not speak of that kind of literature, but
that which evades the law and comes out in
polished style, and with acute plot sounds
the tocsin that rouses up all the baser pas
sions of the soul. To-day, under the nostrils
of this land, there is fetid, reeking, un-
washed literature, enough to poison all the
fountains of public virtue, and sniite your
sons and daughters as with the wing Of a
destroying angel, and it is time that the
ministers Of the Gospel blew the trumpet
and rallied the forces Of righteousness, all
armed to the teeth, in this great battle
against depraved literature
Again: Abstain from those books which are
apologize Of crime. 1t is a sad thing that
some Of the best and most beautiful book
bindery, and some of the finest rhetoric,
have been brought TO make sin attractive.
Vice is a horrible thing any how. II Is born
in shame, and it dies bowling in the dark
ness In this world it is scourged with n
whip of scorpions, but afterwards the thun-
ders of Gods wrath pursue it across bound
less desert, beating it with ruin and woe.
When you come to paint carnality, do not
paint ii as looking from behind embroidered
curtains, or through lattice of royal seraglio
but as writhing in the agonies Of city hos
pital.
Cursed be tho books that try to make inn
purity decent, and crime attractive and
hypocrisy nobel Cursed be the books that
swarm with libertines and desperadoos, who
make the brain Of the young people whirl
with villainy! Ye authors who write them,
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